Nurse Practitioners: Have you Branded Yourself?

Nurse Practitioners specialize in a number of areas from Acute Care, Family, Adult, Oncology and Woman’s Care just to name a few. Because of these highly specialized required skills set employers can have trouble finding top talent to fill their positions through traditional job postings. That means corporate healthcare recruiters turn to recruitment agencies and social media for help source the right candidates. Nurse Practitioners should take this opportunity to brand themselves on their social platforms because recruiters are looking to the web in places like Google Plus, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs and other online platforms to find the best talent!

What do I mean by branding? Branding is simply a way to promote yourself much like the way Pepsi brands and promotes their products. Personal Branding is a way to showcase your unique abilities and skills as a professional nurse practitioner. Check out Dan Schawbel’s PersonalBranding Blog. He’s an expert on building personal brands and has incredibly useful information to help you brand yourself. I also recommend using the platform Brand Yourself. The Brand Yourself website is free and will help you clean up your online identity with the goal of your name and brand rising to the top of recruiters’ organic searches for “Nurse Practitioners”.

Once you have established your personal brand and identity it’s time to update your social media profiles to host the same information. Keeping your message clear and consistent will help your profiles rise to the top of Google searches and will nicely package your online personal brand. Carefully select which social media profiles you wish to be professional. Starting with LinkedIn is always best and then make decisions as to whether you want to add Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and blogs. When settling up your profile information make sure key information like your name (first and last) and title are public. The information that is public is the information searchable by recruiters.

After your brand has been establish and your profiles are updated you can begin to network. Start with linking in to like professionals, past professors and any professional connections you’ve made through your work and schooling. Participate in LinkedIn groups and Twitter conversations. Seek out companies you wish to work for and their human resources recruiters and/or hiring managers and make connections. Just like in the “old” days networking has been very effective in helping people find and gain employment. In today’s world both traditional and social media networking is important in building those relationships and will help you stand apart from the rest of the competition.

As a professional healthcare recruiter I see firsthand how online branding can increase the chances of top talent being found. So go forth and take ownership of your personal brand today!

Guest Blogger:My name is Bonnie Ungaro. I am a corporate healthcare recruiter for Centegra Health System. We are a fast growing healthcare system in McHenry County Illinois (A northwest suburb of Chicago). Currently we are seeking multiple Nurse Practitioners to fill our newly created Acute Care positions.. We are also seeking Nurse Practitioners to support our physician practices in local nursing homes.If you’re interested in this opportunity we would love to hear from you!! To learn more about our positions I invite you to check out our Careers page here.